Research is fascinating, and I LOVE it!
Send me on a research trip and I’ll be head down/bum up for the entire time. 

Now, I know I said at the start of this year I was going to have two/three books going at the same time, so I wouldn’t get so bogged down like I did with Rise, but 2022 just hasn’t worked out that way. 

This ‘heart story’ of mine has consumed me and won’t let go. It hasn’t bored me once, no matter how many old documents I’ve trawled through, how many hours spent on unproductive websites, or how many times I’ve gently guided elderly interviewees back to the subject at hand. 

Yet the more you delve into a person’s story, the more you must delve into the stories of the people around them to discover the reasons for their behaviour. 

Economic conditions, and social behaviours at the time play a huge role as well. There are SO many rabbit holes to disappear into that research becomes more like a large warren. A strange labyrinth that constantly challenges your determination to stay on track, lest you waste hours on some new shiny and fascinating tidbit. (Yes, spoken from experience 🙂)

With fiction, you can create whatever you might need to pull your story along; a nice juicy twist here, a bit of intrigue there.
You can’t do that with a biography, or anything ‘based on a true story’. Well, you can, and I was tempted…. but then I discovered something that in all my excitement, had simply flown over my head.  

I’m not entirely sure why I thought that a biography, or a tale ‘based on a true story’ would be easier to write than fiction.

Perhaps it was because we had the FACTS. Documented proof of what happened at what time. Recorded conversations, photos, admissions, family documents, and newspaper clippings.

I imagined these facts as a skeleton, and a bit of dramatisation would flesh the story out. 
Simples. 
But … nope. 

There are gaps in the story that no amount of research can fill. Educated guesses fill the gaps where we can be fairly certain of the circumstances surrounding them. Other times, the circumstances might lend themselves to a story forming around them, implying characters had ulterior motives. While these might be perfect for the structure and timeline of a fiction novel, they can’t be handled as lightly in a biography. 

Whoever the ‘characters’ might be in a biography, they remain real people, with real families, burdens, and heartbreak. Without ‘proof’ of wrongdoing, it doesn’t seem honourable to create a sinister mantle for a character just to form a juicier narrative. There’s enough betrayal in this story already. 

I’ve always been conscious of the responsibility of bringing these facts to life, and honouring the truth of the story. For me, this also means not fabricating falsehoods for entertainment.
Did they really behave in an untoward way?  
We’ll never know. 
And that’s part of what makes the truth stranger than fiction. 

Dandelion Wishes – The Untold Story of Coral Maxwell-King
Available now!